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Medical Malpractice

Of all the issues in Proposition 46, an omnibus measure on next month’s ballot aiming to improve patients’ rights in several health care areas, money is the one that counts most.
The central question boils down to this: Should victims of medical malpractice and their lawyers get rich, or should malpractice insurance companies stay rich...

WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA -- Dr. Kuemmerle, a methamphetamine addict, was the most prolific prescriber of Adderall and the second-highest prescriber of narcotics in the state. Records show his reckless prescribing went uninvestigated until a drug dealer Dr. Kuemmerle was selling prescriptions to was arrested by an undercover officer. The...

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA: Dr. West was a plastic surgeon with complaints of negligence and dishonesty filed by at least six severely deformed patients beginning in 2000. None of them knew that West had a substance abuse problem, or that he had entered the Medical Board’s secret (and now defunct) addiction monitoring program. In 2005, Dr. West...

SACRAMENTO, CA – Bob Pack, who lost his two young children to a doctor-shopping driver, today called on the California Medical Association to immediately cease airing a television ad from opponents of Proposition 46 that the San Jose Mercury News called “shamelessly deceptive” and of which the LA Times said “practically...

What started as a Danville couple's crusade for justice for their dead children has become a war between some of California's most powerful special interests and the year's costliest ballot measure battle.
Proposition 46 would raise the state's 39-year-old cap on medical malpractice damage awards, require doctors to take random...

Two powerful professional groups — doctors and lawyers — are squaring off and spending more than $65 million on Proposition 46, one of six statewide measures on the Nov. 4 ballot.
Even the measure’s official title — “Drug and Alcohol Testing of Doctors. Medical Negligence Lawsuits. Initiative Statute” — is...

SANTA MONICA, CA – Today the campaign supporting Proposition 46, California’s patient safety ballot measure on the November 2014 ballot, criticized an opposition spokesperson for suggesting that it’s more important that a physician enjoy alcohol than getting to the bottom of an adverse event.
Dr. Sion Roy, a spokesperson for the...

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- A new television advertisement that will be seen in the Los Angeles area in the coming weeks urges support for Proposition 46, which calls for random drug and alcohol testing for physicians and would raise the malpractice lawsuit cap from $250,000 to $1.1 million.
The ad is from Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica-based...

Tort reform," which is usually billed as the answer to "frivolous malpractice lawsuits," has been a central plank in the Republican program for healthcare reform for decades.
The notion has lived on despite copious evidence that that the so-called defensive medicine practiced by doctors merely to stave off lawsuits accounts...

A No on 46 spokesperson suggests that it’s more important that a physician enjoy alcohol after dinner instead of finding out the cause of an adverse event, such as disability or death of a patient. Prop 46 would require drug and alcohol testing of a doctor within 12 hours of an adverse event.
Learn more about Proposition 46 and...